Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Jill Stewart wrote and SN &R printed another one of her regular assaults on public schooling in California. Steward in her rant, like other critics from the Right, uses tortured logic and tortured data.

Steward argues that we should use median cost per pupil rather than average cost per pupil as a measure. Her reasoning is that there are three states and the District of Columbia who allocate so much money that averages are distorted. That makes no sense.There are far more than three states who provide totally inadequate funding (try Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee) and balance the high states. Apparently she is trying to make a case about the difference between median and average. She has not figured it out yet.

If you use average per pupil expenditure, Steward claims California is $489 per student behind. (Better data is available at EdSource.org). So, the class which your child attends lacks $489 per student and there are 30 students, or $14,670 per class. An average elementary school might have 30 classes. So, this average California school is $440,100 under the average of the nation. Yes, that makes a difference. That is why California children rank so low in reading and math. You get what you pay for.

But the real issue is why are there thousands of schools failing in California?The failure of this Governor and prior governors to improve schools in our low income neighborhoods creates the problem. These schools often have miserable working conditions. High schools throughout the state are over crowded making it difficult to teach. And, elementary schools in low income areas has a much as 40% of their teachers new and inexperienced. What political leaders could do would be to improve the working conditions in these schools. Make smaller, safer schools. Provide enough counselors and librarians. (California ranks 49th. out of 50 states in Counselors and Librarians, and books). Provide quality stable school leadership rather than the current revolving door system. And, provide support and time for new teachers to learn from more experienced teachers. Practical steps to reduce the new teacher attrition rate in difficult schools will do more than the Governor’s proposals for merit pay to improve teaching conditions. Stewart continues her campaign to support the Governor’s educational follies using data and arguments from the Hoover Institute. But, there are things that can be done in this year’s budget. These changes do not require a 70 million dollar special election. In fact, you could use the $70 million to improve the schools rather than to hold another election. Improving schools could be achieved with political leadership. Instead the Governor chooses to pick a fight with the unions and to impose a $70 million election on us. This decision reveals political spin- not leadership. And Stewart is an accomplice to the spin doctors.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Most parents and most teachers care about their kids. And, the parents in urban areas are increasingly angered, offended, and frustrated when public officials refuse of offer a decent opporutnity for their children. Some see a racial conspiracy, some blame teachers' unions. Many have given up on democracy and public life and turn to cynicism or dispair. The California Governor’s spin on school reform and the issue of “merit” pay distorts the issues rather than offering solutions. He proposes a small increase in pay for teachers working in difficult to staff schools. But the real issue is why are these schools so difficult? The failure of this Governor and prior governors to improve schools in our low income neighborhoods creates the problem. These schools often have miserable working conditions. In Los Angeles, Jefferson High has over 150% occupancy- and racial riots. That makes it a rather difficult school. High schools throughout the state are over crowded. And, elementary schools in low income areas has a much as 40% of their teachers new and inexperienced. What political leaders could do would be to improve the working conditions in these schools. Make smaller, safer schools. Provide enough counselors and librarians. (California ranks 49th. out of 50 states in Counselors and Librarians, and books). Provide quality stable school leadership rather than the current revolving door system. And, provide support and time for new teachers to learn from more experienced teachers. Practical steps to reduce the new teacher attrition rate in difficult schools will do more than merit pay to improve teaching conditions. These are things that can be done in this years budget. They do not require a 70 million dollar special election. In fact, you could use the $70 million to improve the schools rather than to hold another election. These things could be achieved with political leadership. Instead the Governor chooses to pick a fight with the unions and to impose a $70 million election on us. This decision reveals political spin- not leadership. The Governor said he was going to keep funding the schools. He has not. He said he supported Prop. 98, he now seeks to change it with a constitutional amendment.

Schools do not exist in a vacuum. They are not isolated from their neighborhoods and communities. Inequality in schooling is a product of inequality in society. A progressive movement exists among teachers. The excellent journal Rethinking Our Schools, (circulation over 40,000) and the web site (www.rethinkingschools.org) created by some teachers in and around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, engages, stimulates, validates, and inspires teachers who recognize the central role of urban schools to the anti racism struggle in our nation, and who choose resistance to the anti teacher, Republican, corporate agenda in schools. ( See Why is Corporate America Bashing Our Public Schools? (This blog)

While schools should be a site for building democracy and equal opportunity, this opportunity can only be created with significant new investment in schools in low income areas. Investment requires a political decision. Our elected officials, both Democrats and Republicans have refused to make this decision each year in most local, state, and federal budgets. As state after state faces the current budget crisis, they are cutting education funding rather than improving funding.WE need to invest in our schools, provide equal educational opportunities in these schools, and recruit a well prepared teaching force that begins to reflect the student populations in these schools. The settlement of the Williams case in California is a small start in the right direction. Rather than invest money in reform, governor Schwarzenegger and his Republican allies have followed the lead of the Business Roundtable, Ravitch, and conservative foundations and the Clinton and Bush administrations and increased emphasis on testing to improve scores. This is the heart of school reform advocated by Ravitch, passed by the Bush regime in PL 107-110 , the misnamed, No Child Left Behind Act. (See other posts on this law. )

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

WHY IS CORPORATE AMERICAN BASHING OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS? According to Susan Ohanion and Kathy Emery, the phrase "failing public schools" has a lot in common with "war on terror": get the media to parrot these phrases often enough so that you can't hear "terrorism" without thinking there is a need for war, and you can't hear "public schools" without thinking they are failing and need to be fixed. This language works: ordinary people without an ax to grind, people who haven't set foot in a school for thirty years or more, will testify to failing public schools. This technique forestalls debate about what matters in public schools because the corporate and political elite have already defined both the problem and the solution. We have all become prisoners of their rhetoric, and its time we break the chains that bind us. The beginning of education for democracy is to call things by their right name. And then to stand by those words. In the hands of the U.S. Department of Education, the very title "No Child Left Behind," hijacked from the Childrens Defense Fund, has become the moral equivalent of the Pentagon’s "pacification." Of course, other verbal pyrotechnics are at work here -- what Orwell called doublespeak. No Child Left Behind means the opposite of what it says. It is a plan not to help every school succeed but to declare public schools failures and accelerate the use of vouchers, turning public education over to private, for-profit firms. It is also a plan to blame the victim: the government declares itï¿_s leaving no child behind, so if a kid ends up on the streets after tenth grade, it must be his fault. There is nothing new about politicians using slippery language to round up and herd the citizenry. Every time we hear the ubiquitous ed-bizspeak (schools as data-driven institutions, data-driven reform, total data control, and data-driven decision making) we must stop and challenge it. Stop and ask about the numbers game that obscures the very real needs of real children. Read article on heinemann.comSee the book at www.heinemann.com

You will find each of the above examples of doublespeak in the policies of Schwarzenegger and Bersin.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Unfortunately the press and T.V. such as California Connected will not print the teachers viewpoint. We are reduced to sound bites and chants at demonstrations.Here is an article from the CTA journal for teachers, California Educator, explaining their viewpoint.

One of the first lessons teachers share with young children is the importance of keeping their word. For that reason, it came as a complete shock when the governor of California broke his promise to protect funding for public schools.

Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger borrowed $2 billion from the education budget, with the assurance that he would pay the money back. He vowed that schools would receive their fair share of any additional state revenue and that more harmful cuts would be avoided in future years. Education funding, he emphasized, would only be cut "over my dead body."

Now, even though state revenues are up, the governor is refusing to pay the money back. Even worse, he wants to destroy Proposition 98's minimum funding guarantees for education, which were put in place by a majority of the state's voters. His proposals would allow multiple rounds of midyear cuts across the board.

The net effect is estimated at $25,000 less for every classroom in the state.

This loss compounds the more than $9.8 billion in cuts California schools have suffered over the past four years, which already places the state at 44th in the nation in per-pupil funding; 50th in the number of guidance counselors, librarians and computers per student; 49th in teacher-student ratio; and 50th in library books per student.

Instead of helping teachers get adequate resources, the governor has labeled them special interests that the state must combat. Meanwhile, he has allied himself with big drug, oil and insurance companies that are raising millions of dollars to help him get voter approval for proposals designed to divert public attention from the real problems facing California schools.

In addition to gutting Prop. 98 guarantees, the governor is proposing other so-called reform measures: • Instituting merit pay for teachers, which along with other employment decisions would be based on teacher performance as determined by student test scores on state-adopted standardized tests. • Requiring teachers to teach for five years before gaining permanent status and thus the right to due process protections, and allowing permanent teachers to be dismissed if they receive two unsatisfactory evaluations in a row. • Prohibiting pensions for teachers and other public employees hired after July 1, 2007, leaving them instead in unpredictable 401(k)-style investment plans. • Silencing the voices of teachers and other public employees by restricting their unions' political activities and entangling them in unnecessary paperwork that will waste scant resources.Saying he wants to take his so-called reform measures directly to the people rather than work within the legislative process, Gov. Schwarzenegger is proposing a special election for November that would cost $70 million in taxpayer money.

CTA contends that big corporations are the real "special interests" that stand to benefit from his proposals. Voters are "overwhelmingly opposed" to holding a special election this year, especially when told the price tag, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Instead of trying to work with elected officials, the governor spends his time appearing at fundraisers and media events and posing with a giant spigot that spouts red ink. Such theatrics only mask the real issues facing California.

What follows is a look at the proposals the governor has made and what their implications are for schools.

The more California residents understand how the governor's proposals endanger public education, the angrier they become.

Even though public anger is reaching a fever pitch, the fight has only just begun and will likely continue until November and possibly longer. "We must remember that teachers are powerful voices in our communities - and we are in every community in the state," says CTA President Barbara E. Kerr. If teachers don't get involved in fighting to beat back the governor's attacks, "our classrooms and our profession will be suffering a year from now in ways that are painful to imagine."

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Grassroots advocates for public schools are raising their voices - and getting heard

by ERIN AUBRY KAPLAN

Public education, the favorite whipping boy of the right and of family-values enthusiasts of all stripes, has had a particularly bad first quarter in 2005….

That's the bad news. The good news - specifically, the countervailing news - is that there is also an increasingly organized network of teachers, students, parents and other interested parties who are demanding meaningful reforms of public education and, simultaneously, a place at the decision-making table. Pushed to a breaking point by endless standardized testing, stagnant school conditions and the hovering Damocles' sword of the No Child Left Behind Act, groups like the Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ), InnerCity Struggle and Communities for Educational Equity (CEE) are taking the issues to the politicians - and getting some traction. With the support of school-board member Jose Huizar, InnerCity Struggle and CEE are pushing for the passage of a board resolution that would make the full complement of college-prep courses, known as A-G, requirements for graduation. The CEJ, along with a statewide organization called Campaign for Quality Education, is working with two state legislators to pass bills that would either delay or reform the controversial high school exit exam in California; passage of the exam is currently required for a diploma. State Senator Gloria Romero's bill, SB 517, would put off the "diploma penalty" until local county offices of education can show that they've provided adequate resources, including certified teachers and reasonable student-teache ratios, to all students; Assemblywoman Karen Bass' AB 1531 would require school districts to develop more complex methods of student assessment, beyond the exit exam, so that the exam isn't the sole determinant of whether a student receives a diploma or not.

Luis Sanchez, an organizer with East L.A.-based InnerCity Struggle, says That even though public-education advocates are increasingly fending off attacks, they must also advance new ideas - now. New campuses are finally getting built, and he says it's crucial that the curriculum and direction of the schools be new, too. "We're gaining momentum exactly because of the growth of the 'choice' movement - vouchers, charter schools, privatization," says Sanchez, whose organization counts among its victories approval to build East L.A.'s first new high school in 80 years. "This is an opportunity to start a movement, a big one. It's so easy to fight against stuff, but you can't just be against something. We need to make our own demands."

This kind of reformer energy is not new; activist groups like the CEJ and InnerCity Struggle have been in the trenches on a number of issues for a while. What is new is that their brand of progressivism is moving incrementally From the fringe to the center. The most compelling proof of that is the recent election of officers in United Teachers Los Angeles, the 46,000-member teacher union known much less for courage than for status quo complacency. Thanks to a progressive caucus within the union called United Action that has been gaining membership and influence the last couple of years, UTLA tossed out four incumbent officers and voted in new ones, a move unprecedented in its history. Along with the usual pledges to protect and expand teacher wages and benefits, president-elect A.J. Duffy has been vowing to fight for the neediest schools - specifically by fighting No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which counterintuitively withholds aid from schools it identifies as failing. "It's a horrendous law that's hurting kids," says Duffy, a special-education teacher. "We have inner-city schools with horrendous dropout rates, single families and other problems, which are reflected in test scores, and the feds punish us for that. We're going to fight to do away with NCLB, and we'll fight it with research and information." Duffy admits that the controversial federal legislation has been a godsend in terms of galvanizing not only activists, but other union members who are far from radical but who have become sufficiently dissatisfied with the state of schools and with various attacks on their profession - notably a paltry 1 percent pay raise offered to teachers this year - to vote for a change in union leadership.

"The UTLA election was a huge, huge victory," says Alex Caputo-Pearl, an organizer for CEJ, a key component of United Action. "It remains to be seen what we'll do with it. But there was a perfect storm of problems that the old leadership wasn't addressing that worked in our favor."